The increasing intensity of storms that lead to massive power outages highlights the need for Canada’s electrical utilities to be more robust and innovative, climate change scientists say.

“We need to plan to be more resilient in the face of the increasing chances of these events occurring,” University of New Brunswick climate change scientist Louise Comeau said in a recent interview.

The East Coast was walloped this week by the third storm in as many days, with high winds toppling trees and even part of a Halifax church steeple. Nova Scotia Power says it has weathered nine storm days so far this year — up from four in the same period last year.

Significant weather events have consistently increased over the last five years, according to the Canadian Electricity Association (CEA), which has tracked such events since 2003.

Climate change is causing much concern for the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte.

A major drought in 2016, followed by severe flooding in 2017, resulted in myriad of issues in Tyendinaga, so recently announced funding in excess of $300,000 from the federal government is welcome news for Chief R. Donald Maracle.

“We are extremely appreciative of this funding from the federal government to help us plan to deal with these issues in the future,” Maracle said.

The First Nation Adapt Program is providing funding for a community climate change impact study and a water source protection plan to First Nation communities located below the 60th parallel to assess and respond to climate change impacts on community infrastructure and emergency management. Under this program, the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte will receive $199,183 over two years.

City staff and politicians are welcoming plans for a new provincial agency to help direct the response to climate change, hoping it could bring London more of the data and funding it needs.

The new organization — a not-for-profit proposed by the province to build awareness, provide programming, and develop better regional weather data — could be just what London needs to combat the impacts of climate change, they say.

When winter sets in, “polar vortex” becomes one of the most dreaded phrases in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s enough to send shivers even before the first blast of bitter cold arrives.

New research shows that some northern regions have been getting hit with these extreme cold spells more frequently over the past four decades, even as the planet as a whole has warmed. While it may seem counterintuitive, the scientists believe these bitter cold snaps are connected to the warming of the Arctic and the effects that that warming is having on the winds of the stratospheric polar vortex, high above the Earth’s surface.

In the past year, the scientific consensus shifted toward a grimmer and less uncertain picture of the risks posed by climate change.

When the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its 5th Climate Assessment in 2014, it formally declared that observed warming was “extremely likely” to be mostly caused by human activity.

This year, a major scientific update from the United States Global Change Research Program put it more bluntly: “There is no convincing alternative explanation.”

Resilience is the ability of a system or community to withstand impacts from outside. An indicator is a good way of measuring that. Conventionally, the principal way of measuring a reducing carbon footprint is CO2 emissions. However, we firmly believe that cutting carbon while failing to build resilience is an insufficient response when you’re trying to address multiple shocks such as peak oil, climate change and the economic crisis together.

So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent… Owing to past neglect, in the face of the plainest warnings, we have entered upon a period of danger…. The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedience of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences…. We cannot avoid this period, we are in it now….